Velvet 89 is a free hidden object game that tells the story of communist Czechoslovakia’s “Velvet Revolution” in 1989, which brought an end to 41 years of one-party rule and led to the founding of a parliamentary republic. The game released earlier this month, and you can find it on Steam, iOS and Android. I know nothing about the Velvet Revolution, but I do have some quick thoughts on the use of a format I associate with Where’s Wally to capture a process of extraordinary political change.
Bloober Team created its incoming Cronos: The New Dawn as a sci-fi survival horror to avoid stepping on the toes of its recently released Silent Hill 2 remake.
Cronos: The New Dawn director and designer Wojciech Piejko told IGN that, after releasing The Medium and beginning work on the project which eventually became Cronos, the team at Bloober chose to veer away from a more grounded setting in order to differentiate the game from Silent Hill 2.
“We of course knew that we were doing the Silent Hill game, so we didn’t want to overlap with, let’s say a more grounded story,” Piejko said. “We said, ‘okay, we will be doing this, so we need to go somewhere else to have a different world, to not repeat ourselves.’ So yeah, that’s how we came up with Cronos.”
Piejko said the studio was eager to return to sci-fi after releasing Observer in 2017 too. Cronos was revealed just a handful of days after the Silent Hill 2 remake was released and is a sci-fi survival horror set in an unforgiving post-apocalyptic future in 1980s Poland.
It’s coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC in 2025, though a more specific release date hasn’t been shared yet.
In our 8/10 review of Bloober’s Silent Hill 2 remake, IGN said: “Silent Hill 2 is a great way to visit – or revisit – one of the most dread-inducing destinations in the history of survival horror.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
Developers Dreamlit have piped over fresh footage of their open world ecotribal extravaganza Towers Of Aghasba. It’s an abbreviated but generous display of equatorial exotica and vaguely prehistoric wildlife, home to such key verbs as “exploration”, “village-building”, “gardening”, “creature-nurturing” and “murdering megasloths with a lump of wood”. And look at that, there’s a release date perched on top – 19th November 2024.
Don’t smurf on this one.
We have a confession to make: we were almost certain we knew how this review was going to go before we even started playing The Smurfs – Dreams.
After all, on paper it didn’t appear that anything special was on the cards. Publisher Microids is generally known for releasing solid enough games, but French developer Ocellus is – with the greatest of respect to it – not quite an industry powerhouse, with a few mobile spin-offs based on Talking Tom and the well-regarded Marsupilami: Hoobadventure to its name.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
It’s already been a busy year for the small No Man’s Sky team with no fewer than five major updates (Omega, Orbital, Adrift, Worlds Part I, and Aquarius) for Xbox, PC, and Game Pass Travellers to enjoy. We’re not done yet and are pleased to announce that we’ve embraced the spookiness of the season to bring you our 16th expedition – The Cursed! This free content update for all owners will be available to play starting this week on October 23, 2024, and will last through to November 6, 2024.
The No Man’s Sky universe can be a beautiful place but it’s not immune to sinister goings on! The Cursed sees Travellers battling in a sort of twilight realm against the usual environmental extremes that space has thrown at them, but also, a far more existential threat – the collapse of the boundaries between realities. The new Anomaly Suppressor adaptation for your Exosuit is your main defense against being ripped from your reality.
Haunting voices accompany you on your journey through this fragile, imploding realm. You need to decide whether the information, guidance and assistance they are providing are trustworthy! And ultimately, find their source and their motivation.
Ghostly spectral anomalies are taking advantage of the porous boundaries and drift freely to and from your reality keeping a keen eye on you as you progress. If you maintain your Anomaly Suppressor, they will keep their distance. But if you let your technology deplete, they may be less timid!
The nature of the reality you find yourself in means that hyperdrive technology is inaccessible, thus incapacitating you for conventional interstellar travel. You must therefore fall back on technology of antiquity and cross star systems through the ancient portal networks.
Portals can be located through the procurement of the Elixir of Quicksilver, just one of the materials and potions that can be found to aid you on your journey. The Elixir of Glass can bolster the boundary strength, and the Elixir of Blood can pry open the gateways. But will you dare drink from the Elixir of Water in the final trial?
The Cursed expedition comes with the usual abundance of limited time exclusive rewards including a Boundary Horror adaptation for your Exosuit, a bioluminescent companion, an exclusive ink-stained jetpack trail, and the ultimate prize, the saucer-like Boundary Herald Starship.
We’ve really enjoyed bringing the spook back to No Man’s Sky for this expedition. It reminds us how playful we can be with our strange universe.
Hello Games
Inspired by the adventure and imagination that we love from classic science-fiction, No Man’s Sky presents you with a galaxy to explore, filled with unique planets and lifeforms, and constant danger and action.
In No Man’s Sky, every star is the light of a distant sun, each orbited by planets filled with life, and you can go to any of them you choose. Fly smoothly from deep space to planetary surfaces, with no loading screens, and no limits. In this infinite procedurally generated universe, you’ll discover places and creatures that no other players have seen before – and perhaps never will again.
Embark on an epic voyage
At the centre of the galaxy lies a irresistible pulse which draws you on a journey towards it to learn the true nature of the cosmos. But, facing hostile creatures and fierce pirates, you’ll know that death comes at a cost, and survival will be down to the choices you make over how you upgrade your ship, your weapon and suit.
Find your own destiny
Your voyage through No Man’s Sky is up to you. Will you be a fighter, preying on the weak and taking their riches, or taking out pirates for their bounties? Power is yours if you upgrade your ship for speed and weaponry.
Or a trader? Find rich resources on forgotten worlds and exploit them for the highest prices. Invest in more cargo space and you’ll reap huge rewards.
Or perhaps an explorer? Go beyond the known frontier and discover places and things that no one has ever seen before. Upgrade your engines to jump ever farther, and strengthen your suit for survival in toxic environments that would kill the unwary.
Share your journey
The galaxy is a living, breathing place. Trade convoys travel between stars, factions vie for territory, pirates hunt the unwary, and the police are ever watching. Every other player lives in the same galaxy, and you can choose to share your discoveries with them on a map that spans known space. Perhaps you will see the results of their actions as well as your own…
The post No Man’s Sky: Prepare for an Eerie Expedition with The Cursed Update appeared first on Xbox Wire.
Hello, our tiny No Man’s Sky team has a Halloween treat for our PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PlayStation VR players.
Our last update saw players enjoying a nice chill time, as we added fishing to No Man’s Sky. Our next update couldn’t be more different. As we approach Halloween, we want to scare and surprise players, and The Cursed is an unexpectedly creepy update for No Man’s Sky.
The Cursed is a weird and unsettling gameplay event, where you’ll fight to keep a grip on reality while haunted by visions and voices from another dimension.
Taking place in a sort of twilight universe, The Cursed straddles the boundary between one reality and the next. Here, time can shift unexpectedly, spinning from day to night at a vertigo-inducing rate.
The new Boundary Herald Starship is your safe haven in this haunted universe. Our first flying saucer, is a gorgeous Giger-esque coil of tubes, pipeworks, and engines.
Players must protect themselves against the weakening of the boundaries of reality. Your exosuit comes fitted with a specialized Anomaly Suppressor – maintaining this is the key to surviving while the universe begins to break down around you.
As players struggle to navigate these haunted worlds, they may come face to face with the ghostly beings that drift across the boundaries. Sometimes these spectral anomalies merely observe, and sometimes they can turn much more hostile. These encounters provide players with new challenging enemies and boss battles, at a scale not seen before in No Man’s Sky.
Travellers will not have access to hyperdrive technology, meaning no warping between star systems. Instead, interstellar travel requires careful planning and use of the ancient portal network.
Haunting voices, leaking through from another dimension, will provide guidance, information, strange blueprints,and mystery. It is up to you to decide who these voices belong to, where they are coming from, and if they are to be trusted.
The Cursed brings with it a host of exclusive spooky rewards, including a Cthulhu-esque Horror Exosuit customization, bioluminescent pets, and the ultimate reward, retrieved from the reality collapse, the UFO-like Boundary Herald Starship.
Travel beyond the boundaries and fortify your mind against spectral anomalies – or succumb to the call of the world of glass. The expedition begins today, free for existing PlayStation players and will run for approximately two weeks.
Our last update Aquarius, brought fishing to No Man’s Sky and proved very popular. For us, 2024 continues to be one of our most popular years since launch. In the coming weeks, we have several more surprises, including a specific release to take advantage of the incredible power of the PlayStation 5 Pro at launch.
Our journey continues.
Fallout: London has passed the major milestone of one million players, cementing its place as one of the most successful video game mods of all time.
Fallout: London is a total conversion mod developed by Team FOLON for Bethesda’s Fallout 4. It ditches Fallout’s traditional United States setting for a post-apocalyptic London packed with famous British landmarks and references. It even secured the likes of Baldur’s Gate 3’s Neil Newbon for its voice cast, with former UK Speaker of the House John Bercow in the game, too.
IGN’s Fallout: London review returned a 7/10. We said: “Fallout London is a massive mod that makes good use of its untapped setting, with an impressive scope and some great stories – you’ll just have to be prepared for technical issues and occasionally obtuse design choices along the way.”
The mod was originally due to arrive on April 23, 2024 but actual Fallout developer Bethesda announced a surprise update for Fallout 4, which the mod developer feared would impact Fallout: London’s release.
Team FOLON lead project manager Dean Carter later lamented how Bethesda, which had made clear it was aware of Fallout: London, failed to inform Team FOLON of its plans. “That has, for lack of a better term, sort of screwed us over, somewhat,” Carter said at the time.
Fallout: London eventually launched in July in partnership with GOG, which made the announcement today, October 23 – aka Fallout Day (October 23 is the day the bombs first fell in fallout lore).
“Today, we couldn’t be happier to see the success that Fallout: London has become – reaching the entirety of one million owners on our platform, and achieving it on Fallout Day no less,” GOG said. “We’d like to take this moment to wholeheartedly congratulate Team FOLON on their groundbreaking record!”
In a statement posted on the Fallout: London Discord, the mod team added: “You’ve made this journey unforgettable. We’re blown away by your support, and we can’t wait to share what’s next.
“We’ll keep calm and carry on fixing those bugs, and we’ll see you at our next milestone.
“Stay safe, and remember. Mind the gap.”
The Fallout: London announcement comes ahead of an official Fallout Day broadcast from Bethesda, which promises to reveal more of what’s to come with Fallout 76.
It’s a busy time in the world of Fallout, of course, which was boosted by the smash hit Prime Video Fallout TV show. Bethesda continues to update Fallout 76, and plans for Fallout 5 at some point in the future, perhaps when it’s done with The Elder Scrolls 6. In June, Bethesda Softworks head Todd Howard said he wasn’t interested in rushing a new Fallout game out the door, just because Fallout is hot right now. Could Fallout eventually leave the United States for a setting on foreign soil? No chance, Howard has said.
While fans wait they have mod projects such as Fallout: London to get stuck into, and there’s always Fallout 76 and the existing Fallout games available to play.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Over the past week or so, you may have caught wind of Denuvo – the makers of anti-cheat and anti-piracy software – embarking on a PR campaign of sorts, intended to combat negative public perception of their software. In case you’re unfamiliar, Denuvo’s wares have become infamous for allegedly sabotaging the performance of all sorts of video games, from Resident Evil: Village to Tekken 7, though accounts of the severity vary, and there is an on-going shortage of independently supplied raw data.
Denuvo’s attempts to clear the air include opening a Discord, which they say “ is a key step in fostering closer relationships with game developers, publishers, and players, offering a dynamic, real-time platform for meaningful interaction”. On Monday, Denuvo’s media team reached out to me to offer an interview with Denuvo’s product manager, Andreas Ullmann. Here’s that interview, edited for brevity.
RPS: In a recent public statement you said “we will stop letting every claim about our product go unanswered”. What claims are you referring to?
Andreas Ullmann: It’s basically really about the stuff that’s posted by the community. So you just need to check out Steam forums, for example. Very toxic, very hostile environment. If a game announces to use any of our products, if you check out the Steam forums, all the claims are popping in. SSDs are destroyed by our solution. The usual performance topics, and we simply don’t want to leave the floor to these people who are posting all things about us anymore. We want to also be there for a person who has not heard about us before. We also want to share our view, our opinion on these topics, and also act as a trusted source of information.
No Man’s Sky has launched its 16th expedition, The Cursed — an “unexpectedly creepy update” that hits the eternally popular space game just in time for Halloween.
Developer Hello Games said The Cursed is a “weird and unsettling” gameplay event in which players “fight to keep a grip on reality” while haunted by visions and voices from another dimension. It takes place in what’s described as a “sort of twilight universe” in which time can shift unexpectedly, day turning to night “at a vertigo inducing rate.”
The Cursed introduces the new Boundary Starship, No Man’s Sky’s first flying saucer. “It’s a gorgeous Giger-esque coil of tubes, pipeworks and engines,” Hello Games said. Here’s the official blurb:
Players must protect themselves against the weakening of the boundaries of reality. The exosuit’s usual hazard protection has been replaced with a specialized Anomaly Suppressor — maintaining this is the key to surviving while the universe begins to break down around you.
As players struggle to navigate these haunted worlds, they may come face to face with the ghostly beings that drift across the boundaries. Sometimes these spectral anomalies merely observe, and sometimes they can turn much more hostile… These encounters provide players with new challenging enemies and boss battles, at a scale not seen before in No Man’s Sky.
Travellers will not have access to hyperdrive technology, meaning no warping between star systems. Instead, interstellar travel requires careful planning and use of the ancient portal network.
Haunting voices leak through from another dimension, providing guidance, information, strange blueprints… and mystery. Players will have to decide who these voices belong to, where they are coming from, and if they are to be trusted…”
As you’d expect, The Cursed has a set of exclusive spooky rewards, including a Cthulhu-esque Horror Exosuit customisation, bioluminescent pets, and the aforementioned UFO-like Boundary Herald Starship.
The expedition begins today, October 23, and runs for approximately three weeks. Hello Games added that in the coming weeks it will launch an update for No Man’s Sky that takes advantage of the incoming PS5 Pro at launch. The $700 PS5 Pro comes out on November 7.
No Man’s Sky launched in 2016 initially for PC and PlayStation 4 before coming out on Xbox One in 2018, and PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S in 2020. A Nintendo Switch version followed in 2022. Over the years, Hello Games has issued a long list of major updates that have continued to boost player numbers.
Indeed, it’s a busy time for Hello Games, which alongside updates for No Man’s Sky is working on its next game, Light No Fire. It’s about adventure, building, survival and exploration together, set on a fantasy planet the size of Earth.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
The Day Before developer Fntastic has cancelled its failing Kickstarter for one game and announced another in the same breath.
Fntastic, who released the utterly disastrous The Day Before in December 2023 before pretending to shut down, resurfaced in September asking for money for a new game: the physics based multiplayer game Escape Factory.
It has now cancelled this project, however, after it reached just 15.73% of its Kickstarter goal with $3,146 raised of a $20,000 goal. “Our campaign on Kickstarter is unlikely to reach our goal,” Fntastic said in a statement published to X/Twitter announcing another game.
“After careful analysis and discussion with the team, we have decided that our Escape Factory project has not generated enough interest,” it said. The Kickstarter reached the 15.73% mark after four weeks. “With this in mind, we have decided to temporarily suspend work on Escape Factory and postpone it until a more appropriate time.”
Fntastic is now allegedly working on Items, an action horror prop hunt game. “Your wishes are very important to us,” it said. “This is exactly what many of you have been waiting for.”
No Kickstarter was announced but Fntastic said it may return to the crowdfunding route “or explore other options” once a demo for the game is made. Development will “require significant resources” so Fntastic has “decided to release mobile games” to support the process.
“All funds generated from these apps will go directly into development,” it said. “We believe this will help us create the game of your dreams.”
The term “dream” was often used in Fntastic’s marketing for The Day Before. “We hope that after the game’s success, we’ll give people faith that in this life, if you persevere toward a dream, it will come true, despite all the obstacles and doubts,” Fntastic told IGN in January 2023.
The Day Before launched to an almost impossibly rare 1/10 in IGN’s review and its shutdown was announced just four days after it launched in Early Access. It was one of the most controversial and catastrophic game launches in recent memory (now joined by PlayStation 5’s Concord) as what was touted as the “next generation of post-apocalyptic MMO open-world survival games” was released as a barebones and broken extraction shooter.
Once Steam’s most wishlisted game, suspicion mounted around The Day Before and Fntastic as time went on. It announced delay after delay amid revelations the studio used unpaid workers to develop its games, then a trademark dispute caused more issues.
Allegations the entire game was a scam then emerged from the disgruntled fanbase, made worse by the myriad copycat accusations against Fntastic. Shots in its trailers and screenshots lined up almost perfectly with other games such as Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Cyberpunk 2077, and Grand Theft Auto 5.
For example, a trailer for The Day Before used the phrase: “Welcome to the next generation of post-apocalyptic MMO open-world survival games like never before. Immerse yourself in The Day Before.” Alongside not making grammatical English sense, Cyberpunk 2077’s Official Gameplay Trailer, published years earlier in 2020, used the very similar phrasing: “Welcome to the next-generation of open-world adventure. Immerse yourself in Cyberpunk 2077.”
Red Dead Redemption 2’s Official Gameplay Video, published even further back, used the phrases “…to make combat deep and engaging at all times. Each weapon has unique characteristics, with realistic reload and recoil.” A trailer for The Day Before used: “…to ensure that combat remains deep and engaging at all times. Each weapon boasts unique characteristics, as well as realistic reload and recoil mechanics.”
These are just two examples of myriad accusations with similar weight, but Fntastic denied any wrongdoing, leaned on the “fake news” defence, and implied the accusations were just an attempt at attention seeking. “We all live in a time of disinformation and lack of fact-checking,” it said following the second wave of accusations. “Anyone can say anything for views, and everyone will believe it,” it said. “Disinformation needs to be dealt with.”
Fntastic has put out plenty of disinformation and blatant lies of its own, however, like saying the aforementioned trademark dispute caused a delay when one was planned all along, and saying the studio was shutting down before announcing another game just months later. “S**t happens,” it told fans who were frustrated with the misleading information and failure of The Day Before.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
